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Wednesday, August 28, 2013

'Coming Through' is the second track from Willis Earl Beal's new album Nobody knows. The new song features Cat Power and is very touching and catchy, showing off Willis' incredible voice and songwriting skills.

After two albums to their name The Vaccines are back with a 4-song EP titled 'Melody Calling'. The single from the EP goes by the same name and has a new video that goes along with it. The video has Justin, Freddie and Pete offering relationship advice to Arni, that happens to be of little help.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The National are having a strong 2013 thanks to their successful Trouble Will Find Me album along with a national tour. In their newest video "Graceless" you get to see a fun visual as it describes the bands success and how much they enjoy what they do for a living.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Here at Fake Plastic Tunes, we have a couple of favorite things: talking about music, and day drinking. Thus, in an effort to combine these things, we give you the second installment of our semi-regular segment, Local Music Happy Hour, where we talk to some local (primarily Milwaukee) bands, drink beer, and then introduce them to you, the internet.For this edition of Local Music Happy Hour, FPT was lucky enough to sit down with 5/6 of the strapping young men of Milwaukee band Kane Place Record Club over Bloody Mary's to discuss their upcoming self-titled album, performing live, and who has the most expensive shirt (stay tuned for reveal!).

The six-piece outfit has existed for roughly two years, with its current lineup for about one. The band brings together high school friends Jon Scott (vocals/keys) and Francis Sullivan (guitar) with Eris Campbell (bass), Nick Tovarek (guitar), Chad Alsteen (violin/saxophone), and Maurice Liddell (drums). Sullivan simplified the bands creation as, "Two homies walked into a bar, and picked up four other homies...and they had a slumber party." FPT was unable to confirm this particular origin story, but will publish any quotes mentioning slumber parties exclusively on principle. Prior to listening to their album, it wouldn't be difficult to dismiss Korn Palace Rickshaw Company Kane Place Record Club as just a fun live band. This is far from a negative trait; the band's live performances are easily some of the most enigmatic and high-energy around. With the release of their first album, however, Korn KPRC has successfully solidified themselves musically, in addition to their live presence. Their self-titled release brings together a huge variety of influences and contributions from individual band members--from soul and pop to electronic and hip hop--in an extremely enjoyable, cohesive manner, an accomplishment for any band. That being said, those already familiar with Kane Place Record Club's live performances will be able to hear both new tracks as well as more polished studio versions of songs they are already familiar with from seeing the band live. You can listen to or purchase the album here via the band's bandcamp page, and/or attend the album release show on August 31 at Linnemann's and receive a copy of the vinyl.As promised, the reveal of the owner of the most expensive shirt: frontman Jon Scott.

Jonathan Rado of Foxygen is on the verge of releasing his debut solo album titled 'Law and Order' on September 3rd via Woodsist Records. He is now sharing the song 'Seven Horses' for the third listen in on the new album. The song is a clear cut psychedelic dance jam that has no bass line, Rado states "If you feel it all, clap your hands."

Law and Order Tracklist:
01 Seven Horses
02. Hand in Mine
03. Looking 4a Girl Like U
04. Dance Away Your Ego
05. I Wood
06. Faces
07. Oh, Suzanna!
08. All The Lights Went Out In Georgia
09. I Wanna Feel It Now!!!
10. Would You Always Be At Home
11. Law & Order
12. Pot of Gold

Friday, August 16, 2013

Earlier this week Youth Lagoon premiered their newest video for "Raspberry Cane" from the sophomore album Wondrous Bughouse. The song and video go hand in hand and the visuals that are added to the vocals continue to tell a story in Trevor Powers life.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

FPT shoots the breeze with Moby on his new album- Innocents, post-modern collaboration, the hindsight of Play, Christmas on steroids, and the tyranny of the physical product.

FR: So, do I call you Moby or Richard?

MOBY: Well,
I've been called Moby since I was born. The story I've been told by my
parents was that- before I was born- they decided I was going to be
Richard Melville Hall if I was a boy. Then they looked at me after I was
born and decided that was too big of a name for a little baby. So, as a
joke, they nicknamed me Moby- and for my entire life, I've been called
by my innocent-joke nickname.

FR: Alright. Moby it is.Innocents is out October 1 and
the entire worldwide tour will comprise the weekend of October 2-4.
Why such a consolidated set of shows?

MOBY: For a few reasons. First
and foremost, I've realized as I've gotten older that life is fairly
short. My favorite thing is to be in my studio working on music.
And the problem when I go on tour is that I'm not able to be in my
studio working on music. I'll never complain about touring because
there's certainly nothing wrong about traveling around the world playing
music- but when I go on tour, I sort of stop being creative. And given
the choice between sitting in airports and hotels and not being
creative or sitting at home and being creative... I'd rather work on
music. So that's honestly one of the main reasons. There's also
another slight reason. When I first started touring in 1990 and 1991, I
had this experience where I was in London Heathrow Airport and I saw
this band- I don't remember who they were- but they were middle-aged and
tired and kind of dumpy. You could tell they'd been on the road
forever. They looked just kind of sick and unhealthy- so I vowed to
myself that I would never become that. But then I found myself years
later at London Heathrow... looking middle-aged, tired, and dumpy. I
realized that I had become what I had vowed to never become. Maybe in
the future I'll tour again but life is too short to keep doing the same
thing over and over and over again.

FR: With each show divided into two performances of greatest hits and
newer material, I'm reminded of my own two Moby experiences. The 9:30
Club in support of 2009's Wait For Me featuring new material
prominently and two years later at 2011's Moogfest which focused on the familiar hits. Why is it important to shift focus with
two different shows? And do you think this is a model more long-lasting
performers may possibly adapt to?

MOBY: I
guess it's trying to figure out how to play new music that might not be
that interested as well as older music that- as far as I can tell- is
the reason people would pay money to buy a ticket. Some bands just
refuse to play older songs and then some bands only play older songs- so
I saw this as a way to pay honor to the new music on a new record
without irritating people in the audience too much. I'm sure we've all
had the experience where we've gone to see our favorite band and you're
there to hear your favorite band playing your favorite songs and- for
whatever reason- they only choose to play the music from the new
record. When I go see bands and they do that- honestly, I'm kind of
disappointed.

FR: Innocents is being described as your most collaborative record yet.
That's a bold statement as you are indeed no stranger to
collaboration. How do you feel the idea of collaboration in music has
evolved since your earlier days?

MOBY: First
off, it's become a lot easier because in the "ye olden days" of
the late 80s and the early 90s, records were made on tape. In order to
collaborate with someone, you had to ship tapes around- they were heavy
and you had to rent a big studio with a 2" tape machine and now you can
just send ProTools files or Logic files back and forth so now it's just
easier logistically. And also, my belief is that we live in this age of
expanding eclecticism and I think that one of the reasons why people
are so eclectic now is because music doesn't always cost anything. In
the 70s, 80s, 90s, listening to music meant going out and buying a $20
CD or an expensive record. People had to be almost confined in their
taste because music cost a lot but now with Pandora, Spotify, these
streaming services, people can be very eclectic and it doesn't cost them
anything. I think that's made a lot of musicians more open to
collaboration than they would have been twenty years ago.

FR: For example, I saw earlier this week that Alt-J had taken a stab at remixing the first single from Innocents "A Case
for Shame".

MOBY: Yeah,
I asked them to do it. One of the most wonderful things about remixing
is that you can get someone to do a remix and- especially now- it
doesn't really cost anything to make a remix so they can be completely
experimental doing whatever they want and it doesn't affect the original
song. It's not like other art forms where if someone wanted to remix a
painting, the painting would be destroyed. With music, the original
recording isn't affected in the slightest.

FR: Speaking of "A Case for Shame", was this your first experience directing a music video? Have you ever thought about directing a movie? After all, a lot of
your catalogue feels like the soundtrack to a movie only the listener
can see.

MOBY: To be honest, I had actually directed one music video before-- for Mercury Rev.

FR: Wow. I didn't know that.

MOBY: It was 1996
or 1997. But this last one was the first time I had ever directed any
of my videos. With the Mercury Rev video- it's called "Young Man
Stride"- I don't even know if anyone ever saw it. So with this video-
honestly, I just felt that I had some cameras at my house and I invited a
bunch of friends over and it was this open, relaxed, fun, creative
afternoon where I dressed up my friends in masks and sheets and then
shot them. It's kind of the exact opposite how we made music videos in
the late 90s where you had like a four-day shoot that would cost as much
as a house in suburban New York.

FR: On the same note, I remember that you provided the score for that
batshit crazy Richard Kelley movie, Southland Tales, some years back and
I found myself wondering when/if you
would be doing any more musical work for film?

MOBY: I've
contributed songs to lots of people's movies. I've worked with Danny
Boyle, Paul Haggis, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, but usually that's just
giving a director a song or two. As far as doing a whole score for a
movie, I don't know. The only thing that really interests me is writing
a film score for a more experimental, unconventional movie which is one
of the reasons I loved working with Richard Kelley. Southland Tales is
certainly unconventional. It's interesting because that movie was
almost universally loathed when it came out. I think the only positive
review it got was in New York magazine and the review consisted of the
journalist saying "this movie is batshit crazy and we don't know if it's
good or bad but it's certainly worth watching".

FR: That's exactly how I feel about it. It exists unto itself.

MOBY: Yep.
It's developed a cult following over time. But I'd much rather do a
weird, idiosyncratic music score for a weird, idiosyncratic movie that
might never be seen instead of doing a generic score for Madagascar 3 or something.

FR: What licensing use of your music do you find most evocative? Which one has best reflected your original emotion? Has any licensing adaption surprised you in its interpretation?

MOBY: When
Michael Mann used the song "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" at
the end of Heat, that one was the one I was most surprised by. It felt
like such a perfect marriage of music and film. At that point, I hadn't
really licensed that much music so I hadn't been as involved. So I
went to the theater and had no idea if I was going to be hearing five
seconds of the song or ten seconds and the fact that the song ran for
five-and-a half minutes... it was one of those personal and
professional moments that felt like Christmas on steroids. It was just
so exciting. As a musician growing up, I never expected anyone to
listen to the music that I made. I never expected to have a record
contract. I never expected to have a career as a musician. So when
things like Heat happen, it's so exciting because it's contrary to
anything I ever expected for myself. I really thought that my life was
going to be spent teaching community college and making music that no
one would ever listen to.

FR: Heat was like Christmas on steroids for
people in the audience who obviously didn't write the music so I imagine
it had to be pretty elating.

MOBY: Yeah. It's this quantifiable
feeling. At that moment, I knew that other people were actually
listening to my music and I'd never expected it. It was a really
wonderful moment.

FR: There seems to be a
continuum of sampling styles, from going over-the-top like Girl Talk to
the subtleties of Burial. Where do you see your own work on this
spectrum? Do you build songs around samples, or find the sample for the song?

MOBY: As
a musician, my goal is- to be reductionist about it- is really quite
simple. I'm trying to make music that I love and I'm never too concerned
about what the compositional elements are. I'm not concerned what
genre I'm working in. I'm not concerned who's singing. So I guess I'm
very- in a weird way- emotionally utilitarian. I'm trying to write
music that affects me emotionally without being too concerned with how
it's written or what it's comprised of. I started using samples simply
because I'm not such a good singer and I realized that, if I wanted to
have interesting vocals on my record, I had to work with other singers
and work with vocal samples. Also, samplers really came to prominence
in the late 80s. At the time, it seemed like the most exciting records I
was hearing were made with samplers so it just made me want to jump
in. But Girl Talk and Burial? Aesthetically, my sensibilities are more
in line with something like Burial but- at the same time- if it was
Friday night and I was on a date, I'd rather go to a Girl Talk show.

FR:A Burial show would be pretty cool too.

MOBY: A
Burial show would be great on a Monday night by myself. But... Friday
night, on a date... I guess the only danger at a Girl Talk show would be
your date ending up on stage and you never seeing them again.

FR: Myself- as well as many others- have often directly cited Play as the
album that held hands across the bridge as the idea of what one's
relationship with music could be shifted into the new millennium. How do you
remember the Play experience? Did it seem that pivotal a moment as it
was happening as it does in hindsight?

MOBY: When I was making Play, I
was convinced it was going to be a complete failure- and I'm not just
saying that in a self-deprecating way. The album before that- which was
Animal Rights and I loved- had been a complete failure. So I was
making Play and hoping Daniel Miller would release it almost as a favor
to me. But I didn't expect it to be successful at all. The first show
we did for the release of Play was in a record store in Union Square and
I think like eighty-five people came and I thought that the fact that I could get eighty-five people to come to the
basement of a record store and listen to me play was pretty impressive. When it went on to
become so weirdly successful, every aspect of it was surprising to me.

FR: One of my favorite aspects of your discography are the diverse
influences in your work- from punk to gospel to funk to ravecore- is
there a current artist you find yourself drawn to?

MOBY: I
guess probably James Blake. I don't know that much about him. As far
as I can remember, I first heard about him when he signed to Warp
Records. I thought of him as an electronic musician but when I heard
his version of the Joni Mitchell song, "A Case of You", I just loved the
weirdness and the diversity and eclecticism of his approach to music.
With the most recent album he made, I love that he's made this soulful
music using a lot of unconventional but traditional elements.

FR: The music industry has really gone sideways in the past fifteen
years from Napster to iTunes to Pandora to Spotify and beyond.
The way people are encouraged to listen as well as experience music has
changed and you've had a front row seat to much of this evolution- we
touched on that a bit
already. But where do you see the music
scene going in the next fifteen years?

MOBY: That's a really good question. I don't know if I have an equally good
answer. It does seem- and I'm hesitant to say this because I love
buying vinyl and I love listening to albums- but all indicators point to
a future based around music streaming which certainly doesn't mean the
end of the album. But it does mean that there may be a time in the near
future where it seems anachronistic for people to own music. Friends
of mine are already experiencing that. They'll get Spotify or Pandora
and suddenly they'll get so excited to have way more music at their
fingertips than they could ever consider owning. It's certainly not the
most insightful thought because everyone else in the music business
recognizes that streaming is the future. The fact that music
production is less expensive as well- for the longest time, music production was expensive- now
though it costs nothing to make music. Pretty much all you need is
software on your laptop and I only see music production getting more
egalitarian.FR: Is it difficult producing an album knowing that so
many people have instantaneous access to thousands of songs as opposed
to when you were producing Animal Rights or even Play where you knew
that people would buy the CD and that CD would be the music they had for
that hypothetical day?MOBY: There is a part of me that loved the
tyranny of physical product- cassettes, vinyl, CDs. It was nice because
if someone bought your CD, there was a good chance they would listen to
the whole album. But, at the same time, everything has changed and it
would be a futile effort to complain. I read some interview with Thom
Yorke- and of course I love Thom Yorke and I love Radiohead- where he
was complaining about Spotify and to me that just seems like you're
complaining about aging or bad weather. There's literally nothing you
can do about it. And with bad weather and aging, the best thing you can
do is just accept it and make the most best out of it and see the
positive in it. So when I think about how easy it is to make music and
how easy it is to listen to music- on one hand, I think it's wonderful
because it means that music has become such a ubiquitous art in so many
people's lives. Of course though- when I make an album- I do have that
presumptuous hope that at least a few people may listen to the album
from start to finish. - Fr. Jones

What was once a highly anticipated sophomore release for 2013 has shifted into one that is going to be highly scrutinized, especially if it proves to be lackluster. English band Yuck's self-titled album was one of the best of 2011, but after the departure of frontman Daniel Blumberg, I became wary of what the sophomore effort (Glow & Behold) would reveal.

The group, now led by Max Bloom, is still unleashing heavily 90s-alt-based tracks, starting with the first single "Rebirth" and now with the latest single, "Middle Sea". With each track the group released the pressure and potential skepticism is being lifted. Check out the YouTube stream for "Middle Sea" below.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Add "Music Video Director" to Matthew Houck's repertoire as renaissance man. The frontman and brains behind the moniker Phosphorescent has just released a self-directed music video for the next single off of Phospho's brilliant Muchacho, "Ride On/Right On" which can be seen below.

Sometimes a song comes out and you're feeling kinda meh about it; nothing too fancy. And I don't mean to say MGMT's new song is bad, because it's still highly entertaining and enjoyable, giving a fair preview into their third, self-titled, album. Then there's times where that song gets matched with a video that perfects it, making it all that much more enjoyable. With that in mind, we present you with MGMT's "Your Life is a Lie"

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Loud Like Love will be Placebo's seventh studio album, and is scheduled for a September 17 release date via Universal Music Enterprises. The new album was recorded in London at RAK Studios during 2012 and 2013, and was produced by Adam Noble. The English band originally formed back in 1994 and have went on to sell over 12 million records. The one constant that I have always admired about Placebo is their unique sound and that starts with their frontman Brian Molko who continues to show off his one of a kind vocals almost 20 years later in this new single 'Loud Like Love'.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

One of my favorite tracks of the summer has gotten the music video treatment: Poolside's "If We Make It" stands out as one of the best tracks of 2013 thus far. No word yet on when our favorite Daytime Disco act will be putting out a followup to last year's amazing Pacific Standard Time, but the duo is headed out on tour this Summer.